Published: April 25, 2008 12:31 am            

IU’s Phegley rocks the Big Ten with .447 average

BLOOMINGTON — If you were late for Josh Phegley’s college baseball coming out party, don’t worry about it, Phegley probably doesn’t mind.

That’s because the Phegley party didn’t really get started until the current season — Phegley’s second with the Hoosiers. But now that the party’s started, it’s rocking the entire Big Ten Conference.

Phegley is currently leading the Big Ten with a .447 batting average and a .512 on-base percentage. He has six home runs, 46 RBIs and is slugging .688.

Going into Wednesday’s game against Indiana State, Phegley was nine points ahead of Northwestern’s Mike Kalina for the Big Ten batting crown … and Phegley improved his average by 16 points with a 4-for-4 performance against the Sycamores. He now enjoys a 25-point advantage.

So he’s hot. Red hot. And it confirms the thoughts of many area baseball fans who thought Phegley was a lead-pipe cinch to succeed at the college level after winning Mr. Baseball honors for Terre Haute North in 2006.

Except … it hasn’t been that easy.

Phegley’s freshman season was a learning process. He hit .232 with no home runs and 16 RBIs in 42 starts at catcher for the Hoosiers.

No home runs? That didn’t add up for the Terre Haute native who hit 13 in his senior season alone at North, many of which were moonshots. Phegley’s freshman slugging percentage (.289) at IU was 303 percentage points lower than his senior season batting average (.592) with the Patriots.

“Coming in as a freshman and getting tons of playing time, I expected my senior year to translate to college and this is a whole new level of play. I struggled early on and put a lot of pressure on myself to produce,” Phegley said.

Phegley had to regain the confidence he had in such abundance at North, but it began to resurface during this Cape Cod Baseball League season last summer. The Cape Cod League is considered the best of the collegiate wooden bat leagues and is the destination of choice for most college players after the NCAA season is over.

That’s where Phegley began to regain his stroke, but more germane to his current production, began to shake off self-doubt. Playing for the Cheshire, Conn.-based Wareham Gatemen, Phegley hit .269, had six RBIs and was the starting catcher for the Western Division All-Stars.

But it wasn’t the production so much as gaining the sense that he belonged at a high collegiate level.

“It helped a ton. If you can hit .270 against the best pitchers in the country with wood [bats], there’s not a whole lot you’re going to see against these pitchers you haven’t already seen,” Phegley said. “As soon as I went out this summer, it was a fresh start, because no one really knew who I was. There wasn’t any pressure. I ended up having a good year and the confidence has been high since.”

IU coach Tracy Smith noted that once Phegley proved to himself that he could produce at the collegiate level, the sky’s been the limit.

“He’s so much more confident. He went out to Cape Cod this summer and was an All-Star. I think that showed him what we’ve been telling him all along, that he’s one of the best in the country. Until he played with guys from other programs and other parts of the country, I don’t think he believed it,” Smith said.

It wasn’t all mental. Phegley helped his cause by making a mechanical change to his swing.

“I used to hit standing tall and I had a real long stride, so my timing had to perfect to hit a ball hard. Now I just sit in there with a wide stance and let the ball travel,” Phegley said.

Phegley isn’t satisfied. He feels he’s “average at best” when it comes to his defensive skills at catcher, but Phegley’s Major League Baseball draft stock is likely back to where it was when he left North, when he was widely believed to be a sure-fire selection in the first 10 rounds of the 2006 draft had he not already made a commitment to attend IU.

But for now, Phegley is just enjoying the ride and trying to get the Hoosiers — last place in the Big Ten going into a weekend series with Big Ten-leading Michigan — more competitive.

“It’s been a lot more enjoyable this year. It’s pretty easy to play when you don’t have any worries offensively,” Phegley said.

Todd Golden is sports editor of the Tribune-Star. He can be reached at (812) 231-4272 or todd.golden@tribstar.com.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.